Brentwood, Tenn.-based Goldleaf Financial Solutions Inc., a technology-services provider for 2,800 community financial institutions, on Thursday took a big leap into the fast-growing niche of remote deposit capture by announcing its $42.5 million acquisition of Alogent Corp., a prominent purveyor of remote-deposit software. Until now, Goldleaf's core business has been …

Biometric-authentication and loyalty-services technology provider Pay By Touch is in bankruptcy, has cut costs drastically, and is shopping some of its subsidiaries, but the company's former chief executive–who is now a member of the firm's newly constituted board of directors–says Pay By Touch is solid at its core. “This company …

Intuit Inc.'s agreement to buy Electronic Check Clearing House Inc. (ECHO) for $131 million in cash, announced on Wednesday, came about largely because of ECHO's move to shed its gambling-related electronic-wallet business earlier this year, an Intuit executive tells Digital Transactions News. It was that business, in which ECHO processed …

The practice of giving away point-of-sale payment terminals, which started out as a tactic to attract salespeople, has become a huge phenomenon in the merchant-acquiring business that threatens the profitability of many industry firms, particularly smaller independent sales organizations more reliant on hardware revenues than larger acquirers. That's the conclusion …

TIO Networks Corp. signaled a new strategy last week when the kiosk network struck a deal with IPP of America Inc. to process bill payments at IPP walk-in locations (Digital Transactions News, Nov. 29). For the first time, TIO will be handling transactions on its network without the need to …

Though Capital One Financial Corp. and prepaid card manager NetSpend Holdings Inc. late on Monday said they had “mutually agreed” to call off Cap One’s planned $700 million cash acquisition of NetSpend, the move may have been a consequence of the deal’s hefty price tag, says an analyst who follows …

Qualcomm Inc.'s $210 million cash deal for Firethorn Holdings Inc., announced on Wednesday, is expected to accelerate Firethorn's movement toward mobile payments and hands Qualcomm a significant stake in the rapidly developing markets for both banking and payments via handsets, according to Tripp Rackley, chief executive of Atlanta-based Firethorn. “All …

Biometrics payment technology provider Pay By Touch reaped a bushel of favorable publicity last week when it launched its fingerprint-based system at 10 Chicago-area Shell stations in the company's first petroleum-sector rollout. What went unmentioned, however, was that Pay By Touch's parent company was entangled in court fights on the …

Data Insecurity Part 8 Few payment innovations have produced the stark schizophrenia that we are experiencing with mobile commerce. Normally somber business types are rubbing their hands together at the prospects of reaching consumers on a one-to-one basis, online, all the time, anywhere they happen to be. Meanwhile, typically apprehensive …

A merchant trade group and at least one bank card network are exchanging fire again this week over the fees merchants pay to accept cards. Triggering the skirmish this time was a press release and report prepared by the Merchants Payments Coalition as a follow-up to a July 19 Congressional …